


Psychological Warfare

by cymbalism



Series: Combat 'Verse [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, First Time, Flirting, M/M, Mind Games, Seduction, Slow Build, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cymbalism/pseuds/cymbalism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim uses the full force of his charm to tempt McCoy into bed again. McCoy has his own strategy for getting Jim to ask for it instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psychological Warfare

**Author's Note:**

> Bigger, longer, and uncut because where Jim's a fast-moving fire, McCoy's a long, slow burn.

In McCoy's experience, James T. Kirk never asked for anything—he _wheedled_.

Some called it the Kirk charm, Jim's ability to flirt his way into anything he wanted. McCoy usually thought of it as damn annoying, but figured it was a good indicator of when Jim was up to something. And Jim had definitely cranked up the charm almost immediately after that impromptu hand job incident.

McCoy still wasn't sure whether Jim had started that evening intending to bait him into his bed, but he knew Jim wasn't complaining about the outcome. And neither was McCoy, actually. He'd grumbled the next morning about Jim's playacting drunk, but he'd never implied the ends hadn't justified those means—wrangling with Jim in bed was not a new idea, after all. Mostly he was content to leave it at that and didn't feel the need to elaborate on the whys and hows and what nows.

But evidently Jim interpreted his silence on the subject as an invitation to set up his hoped-for "next time."

He'd started subtle (for Jim, anyway). Dropped comments here and there. Nice shirt. Good pants. Stopped short of "you been working out?" But it wasn't as though he was all praise all the time. Instead, Jim's approach to seduction was more like a kind of cracked psychological warfare. He launched loaded compliments and rocket-fueled smiles at McCoy without remorse, no matter who else was within range.

Coming out of their Interstellar Species Anatomy lecture one day, the course commander had complimented McCoy on his astute observations regarding the Andorian exoskeleton. Jim had seconded, "Yes, Bones, I've also noted your skillful knowledge of the body," with a sultry smirk the commander did not see, and that was only the beginning.

McCoy also discovered Jim's unbelievable gift for turning nearly everything into a come-on. Like when McCoy had sharply reminded him that, dammit, he was a doctor not a mind reader and Jim halted midstride with a hand on his hip and tongue peeking at his lip, made a surprise- and pleasure-soaked _mmm_ sound, and asked, "But wouldn't it be fun if you were?" And McCoy definitely did not need to be a mind reader to know what Jim was thinking just then.

At first McCoy ducked every blow, operating under the theory that Jim couldn't claim victory over clamped lips and a scowl. But after a few days of nonstop sexual innuendo, McCoy was ready to hogtie him—and not in the way Jim would think was fun.

He ignored and deflected under heavy onslaught for nearly a week. As it turned out, it was something small that made him snap. They were jogging up the steps to the lecture hall for their Anatomy class (a requirement for McCoy, but he still had no blasted idea why Jim was taking it as an elective), and Jim made a point of reaching the door first and gallantly holding it open for McCoy to step through.

It was the chivalry that set him off. Jim was using McCoy's own damn tactics against him.

"Good God, man," he huffed, pausing just inches from Jim and locking eyes with him. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing. You're subtle as hound in heat. Didn't your mother ever teach you that if you want something the polite thing to do is to just ask for it?"

Jim's expression was all earnestness and pretend confusion. "I _am_ being polite," he insisted and gestured to the door he still held open.

"A pain in my ass is what you're being," McCoy upbraided, shifting past Jim into the dim building. Jim's mouth opened for some kind of a dirty rejoinder, but McCoy put up a hand to stop him. "That was not an invitation to comment on my ass, you horny bastard," he snarled. But if he happened to saunter more than stalk away, well, then so be it.

He knew it was his patented immunity to Jim's charm itself that presented a challenge Jim couldn't resist. McCoy was precisely the kind of no-win scenario Jim didn't believe in.

Really it wasn't so much the amount of flirtation that nettled McCoy as the quality of it, the fact that Jim thought this school-kid stuff worked to get someone into bed. (Hell, McCoy was annoyed that it had worked for Jim, several (hundred?) times.) Although he was oddly flattered by Jim's determination.

What it came down to for McCoy was this: Jim might have the get-go and stamina of a prize stallion and may have run every race he'd been offered, but the fact was McCoy had almost ten years on him, and most of those had been spent in a real—if not always steady—relationship. In those years he'd acquired a powerful secret weapon: McCoy had learned how to wait.

And so he did.

As days went by Jim's jibes and taunts and teases had their effect, sure. Images of what Jim had looked like splayed on his bed, flushed and sated and fuckable, strayed through his mind regularly at Jim's verbal prompts and suggestions. More than once McCoy was tempted to stop Jim's pert mouth by grabbing his equally pert ass and dragging him to the nearest bed/wall/closet/empty lecture hall to have done with it. But that would mean the little shit won again, and frankly neither McCoy's nor Jim's egos needed that.

So instead he let Jim work himself up. If Jim had McCoy thinking about sex some of the time, it meant Jim was thinking it about it _all_ of the time. And Jim's living in constant anticipation of sex (more than usual, anyway) was doing McCoy's work for him, winding Jim into a tight coil of pure want. Just by giving him a taste of his own Iowa stubborn McCoy was gaining the advantage—want wound tight enough would become need, and applying the right pressure to need would spring-release Jim into action. McCoy would win by default.

Of course, his plan was highly contingent on Jim's not seeking that release elsewhere. It was a possibility, but because Jim had altered his approach after McCoy confronted him, refocusing his strategy around physical temptation (he used the same blunt-force approach to physical seduction as verbal, and McCoy was finding it just as inept and insulting), Jim's own tactics were working against him here, too.

Jim opted to stay in during the evenings now. He claimed it was because he needed to study, but McCoy suspected it was so Jim could be present to strip down to his Starfleet skivvies in front of him. McCoy didn't mind the view but, enticing as the taut stretches of the backs of Jim's thighs were, it was nothing he hadn't seen a few hundred times before.

And Jim had no concept of pacing. He stripped with insistence, with the impatience of an imminent lay. He lacked style, had no sense of how to use his natural sensuality to its best advantage. But it gave McCoy an idea—if Jim expected that kind of thing to work on McCoy, it followed that it might work on Jim.

Still, McCoy waited. Waited until Jim was so intent on his own plan of attack he neglected to consider a counteroffensive. Waited until Jim had wound himself so tight he wouldn't have a choice but to act or ask.

He launched his campaign on a night Jim was settled at his desk with his copy of _History of Strategic Thought, 1991–2063_. It was the end of the school week, but Jim had been bent over the book for hours, pausing only occasionally to expound on why a theory or decision was irrelevant or flat-out wrong. (According to Jim, if he had been in command, half the wars of the early twenty-first century would have ended quicker and much more decisively.)

Close to bedtime, McCoy yawned and stretched audibly and visibly enough to lure Jim's attention. "Is it that late?" Jim asked, eyes not leaving the page. McCoy muttered something purposefully unintelligible through a second yawn and got to his feet. This time Jim looked up. "What?"

McCoy rolled his eyes in mock annoyance as he reached his arms high over his head, moving into a short series of stretches. Sleeves rolled up, his muscles flexed under his old plaid shirt, and now he was sure he had Jim's undivided attention.

"I said, 'Not really, but I'm beat.' Think I'll turn in early," he repeated as he flicked through the buttons of his shirt and untucked the tails from the top of his jeans, letting them hang free, chest bare beneath.

He ignored Jim, same as he would any other night, as he turned to their shared nightstand and grabbed the glass he kept there. Casually turning back, facing Jim, McCoy frowned at the few inches of water left at the base of the tumbler, shrugging as he decided to down them.

With his head titled back, McCoy felt cool air slip over his exposed neck and chest. He finished off the contents of the glass with a few deep swallows, and as he rubbed the back of his wrist over his lips he heard a gulp from across the room. From Jim. He continued toward their in-room wash station to refill his glass and clean his teeth without acknowledging it.

Somewhere along the line McCoy had learned that being sexy is about being deliberate. Not necessarily moving slow, but with intent. Knowing what you're doing, being in command of your actions. (That's what so often attracts patients and nurses to doctors, he knew.) And marriage had also taught him it involves pretending your partner can't have what they've already got, raising the stakes in a spontaneous way to get their attention and keep it.

Pausing at his bedside again, McCoy ran his fingers over his abdomen to satisfy a nonexistent itch, moving his hand down to just below his navel. Then he undid his jeans, belt, button, and fly, but left them on, barely clinging to his hips.

Jim shifted in his desk chair.

McCoy stripped back the bedclothes of his regulation-size bed before removing his shirt the rest of the way. He ran a hand up through his hair and down over eyes, mimicking sleepiness. "You still up for that workout tomorrow morning?" he asked.

Jim's spine went straight in a full-bodied guilty flinch. "What? Yeah, sure. Tomorrow we're gonna workout." His eyes were intent on his book, but his voice was slightly strangled with distraction of another kind.

"All right, then," McCoy said, drawl a little heavier than usual. Half turning away from Jim, he slipped off his jeans, letting them pool at his ankles with a clank of his belt buckle against the tile floor. He stepped backward and bent to retrieve them. In nothing but his boxer briefs, McCoy finished his routine of folding and tidying the clothes. At the corner of his vision he could clearly see Jim watching him, despite his attempts at covertness.

As McCoy moved back to his bed, he passed a hand over his groin, more of a quick full-palm caress than a typical manly, perfunctory kind of scratch, and that did it. Jim sprang to his feet, hands in a panicky flutter at his sides.

"I'm gonna . . . I've gotta—um." His too-blue eyes flickered around the room, landing everywhere but on McCoy. "I'll be . . . back." And with that, he fled.

McCoy was laughing before the door was all the way shut behind Jim. He plopped onto his bed and let the laugh flow through him. "About damn time," he said aloud.

He still chuckled as he grabbed the book off his bedside table, commanded the lights lower, and stretched out on his back. That wasn't quite the ending he'd imagined to that battle, so maybe he hadn't yet won the greater war. Victory was no less sweet, however. He rolled up onto his side and propped his cheek on his fist and tried to focus on his book and not the image of Jim's shocked face just before he'd bolted.

But then Jim was back. He was back and he was wet and wearing a towel around his waist that wasn't his (because his was hanging on the back of the door, and was not pink).

McCoy blinked and shuffled a hand over his head and face again, leaning back on his elbows. Assuming Jim had hit the shower, he hadn't been gone long enough to really fix his particular problem—the one the towel was doing little to hide.

And yet there he stood in the entry, bare skin glistening in the half light, seemingly as stunned to see McCoy as McCoy was to see him and panting from some kind of exertion. After all the contrived nonsense Jim had subjected him to in the past few weeks—the strategic smiles and preplanned propositions—it was this haphazardly natural, partially pissed off Jim Kirk that McCoy found himself attracted to. Strongly attracted to.

Between breaths Jim gulped, but whatever he had to say didn't make it past his lips. Instead his eyes swept over McCoy as McCoy's did him. Water slicked over Jim's chest and abdomen, slid off his shoulders, dripped from his disheveled hair, dampened the top of the pink towel he'd tucked around his hips. When their stares locked Jim said, slowly, "You did that on purpose."

McCoy made it halfway to a full smile before Jim launched. His aim was dead on and he flattened McCoy with the force of his body hitting the bed and the shock of surprise, but McCoy shot out a hand just before Jim's body collided with his. He stopped him with a palm to his slippery sternum, "Whoa there, cowboy," he drawled, smiling slow and wearing his own desire plainly now. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'll show you," Jim breathed, pushing down in continued assault, struggling to get more of his body into contact with McCoy's.

"Show me what?" McCoy wriggled out from between Jim's knees and beneath his chest as much as he could while still holding him at bay.

Jim craned his neck down to watch his towel loosen with McCoy's movement, but made no attempt to stop it. Instead he turned a feral smile back on McCoy, eyes bright. "Come on, Bones." He ground his hips down but only managed to brush McCoy's leg. "You'll like it, I promise."

This was heading more in the direction McCoy had originally imagined. Jim was actually holding his weight on his own arms now, allowing McCoy to slide his hand down Jim's abs. "Like what?" He twisted his hand to fan his fingers toward that patch of revealed skin below Jim's navel but above everything urgent.

Jim's eyelids fluttered shut, and his voice was frayed at the edges when he answered, "Like it when you get to fuck me."

McCoy's hand and brain and body ground to a halt. Jesus, good answer.

It was mutually assured debauchery after that. McCoy pushed up and Jim pushed back, holding his position on top. He dropped the length of his body against McCoy's as he dove at McCoy's mouth, and he kissed like—God, it was good. Smooth and deep and full and slow. McCoy's eyes closed. He was already hard and Jim was already on it, rocking his hips in waves across him, the nonsense about warring and winning ebbing away with every motion.

All the finesse Jim had lacked in seducing McCoy into bed he more than made up for once there. And McCoy surrendered to it—to Jim's warm wet smell, to Jim's lips on his mouth and neck and chest, to Jim's hand slipping around the back of McCoy's thigh to lift it as he dipped against him, hips in time with tongue.

It wasn't enough. McCoy still had his briefs on, couldn't feel Jim completely, couldn't do to him all the things he wanted to from flat on his back.

This time when he pushed up Jim relented and he rolled their bodies easily, his hands immediately slipping into the waistband of McCoy's briefs to help peel them off. When their bodies met again, McCoy's breath guttered at the feel of Jim's warmth.

Jim's hands skittered all over McCoy now, running wherever they could reach, producing a cool, airy tingle that contrasted with the heavy heat of Jim's body below him. For weeks Jim had been flitting around him like some kind of firefly, teasing in a way that made him not quite real. But now Jim's body beneath him was solid, sturdy. Tangible. McCoy bobbed to lap at Jim's nipple. Jim moaned and McCoy felt the vibration with his lips.

He was nuzzling Jim's throat and neck and ear—his thumb picking up where his mouth had left off at Jim's nipple—when Jim's roaming hands subsided, leaving off at the bottom curve of McCoy's ass. Jim widened the spread of his legs and began to push-pull, push-pull McCoy into a rhythmic rising tide. At least one "oh, God, Jim—" escaped McCoy before Jim was kissing him again.

For a while, then, they made out like teenagers, fascinated and free-ranging and fucking turned on, roaming across the narrow expanse of McCoy's bed together. Whenever his mouth wasn't in contact with some part of McCoy's person, Jim mumbled or moaned encouragement, or bit his bottom lip as though to keep from saying too much.

McCoy folded Jim's earlobe into his mouth with his tongue, swirled and nipped and gave his own soft moan of satisfaction. He felt Jim get even harder. It was simple stimulus–response, the body at its most basic and sexy as hell. For every action, McCoy got an equal or greater reaction from Jim. Licking Jim's ear got him hard, rutting their cocks together made him gasp curses, trying to pin him resulted in a growl and abrupt flip of positions, Jim's mouth delving into his.

Sex the way nature intended it was just two people crawling out of their skins and into each other's. It was an organic, naked desire. An innate kind of control. Honesty was all over the way Jim's body responded to his—all uncomplicated, unambiguous want.

McCoy slid out from under Jim, rolling him to his back so McCoy was lying on his side, erection pressing into Jim's thigh. He wedged a knee between Jim's legs to get him spread and exposed and carded his finger through the scruff at the base of Jim's cock before taking him in hand.

At McCoy's touch, Jim's head tilted back hard, chin jutting and throat flushed, as his pelvis thrust up. The sight sent a delicious twist through McCoy—a twist that screwed tighter when Jim moved to loosely cup his hand, not to stop or direct it, but to ride as a passenger on McCoy's strokes.

"Dammit, Jim," McCoy panted, burying his forehead into Jim's shoulder and squeezing his eyes closed. The image of Jim sprawled on a bed jerking himself rose in his mind and he sunk his teeth into the smooth muscle of Jim's shoulder and forced himself not to hump into coming against Jim's leg.

He worked Jim for a few more pulls before trailing his hand up and around and behind Jim's hip. Jim shifted onto his side, granting McCoy better access. McCoy ran the length of his middle finger along the valley of Jim's ass, slow and smooth and teasing up to the small of his back and down again.

Free hand trapped between their bodies, idly fondling them both, McCoy paused to fumble for the tube of lubricant he knew Jim kept stashed in the nightstand. Though as a doctor he was used to performing complicated tasks one-handed, he made a mess getting his fingers slick anyway. He was careful and accurate, though, when he reached around Jim to search out the tight point of muscle between his glutes. He slipped a finger inside and Jim groaned out something wordless and ragged and hungry.

As McCoy primed Jim with his steady fingers, he employed one final strategy. He kept his lips to Jim's ear, telling him in whispers how good Jim felt, how hot Jim was, how good being inside him would feel, stringing more words together than he had all evening.

Jim was thrumming by the time McCoy had him ready, a mass of sloppy pliancy jolting with involuntary muscle contractions. "Bones," he graveled, drawing out the word like a prayer of desperation. "Bones."

And maybe McCoy had heard him say it earlier, but this time he felt it. Felt it in his bones, felt his skeleton light up like an old-fashioned X-ray, and he flashed back to that night weeks ago that began the war they were ending here.

"Bones, God. Oh, oh—" Jim panted as McCoy pulled away from him, frantic eyes searching McCoy's face before cottoning on and swiveling into place. Without breaking eye contact, McCoy moved them into position. He hiked Jim's hips up and Jim eagerly wrapped his legs around McCoy.

Bullshit stripped back, here was Jim, sober, sexy, and simmering beneath him, begging him with his wide blue eyes. But McCoy wanted to hear him say it.

McCoy rubbed gently past Jim's ready entrance, pressing firmly for half a second before moving away.

"Bones." Jim clutched at him and McCoy did it again. And again.

Jim began to shake. McCoy continued stroking, nudging, pulling away until—

"Please, Bones," Jim rasped, squeezing his eyes shut but opening them immediately to resume their gaze. A deep, indefinable kind of satisfaction unraveled in McCoy, flooding his veins and lungs and leaving him equally breathless. "Please," Jim pleaded again. "Please, I want—I want you in me, I want you to—oh, fuck yes, Bones—"

McCoy sank inside him, an easy plunge all the way down, and they both cussed through the heat and pressure and pleasure. It surprised McCoy a little to find Jim was a giver, not a taker, in the act. Jim laid back and took it, but there was nothing submissive about him. He churned his hips for friction, flexed his thighs to bring McCoy in deeper, petted and stroked himself and McCoy. McCoy drank it in, the sight and sound of Jim, the sensation of him. He felt it when Jim began to quiver, tightening and trembling, and he bit out McCoy's name in quick repetition. Jim quaked when he came. He shoved his fingers through McCoy's hair and pulled their bodies together, a final shout erupting from his lungs. It didn't take more than that, and McCoy came with a physical surge.

They collapsed together, sweat on their brows and arms and chests, hair mussed and muscles limp. Jim scooted out from under him and McCoy lolled onto his back. They lay apart, steadying their breath and staring at the ceiling, in silence until Jim tipped his head toward McCoy. "Okay," he rasped, "you win."


End file.
